Monday.com vs Rework: A (little biased) comparison

Let me guess. If you are reading this article, you must have used, or must be using, or at least be thinking about using Monday.com, and there’s something about it that holds you back, therefore you are looking for some alternative. I’m grateful for any force there is that sent you this article so you can get to know us. 

I’ll be straightforward. As you can see, this is not going to be a completely fair comparison. Surely people from Monday.com will have different things to say. We also haven’t really used Monday.com that much at our work (of course, we use Rework); this review is based on our experience with Monday.com free trial system, our understanding from building management tools ourselves, and collected reviews of Monday.com from the Internet and also from our own customers. 

But, since you are in need of some alternative, just take a look at what we have to offer. What if that could be the thing you’re missing from Monday? 

Disclaimer: In this article, I only focus on Monday Work management product. Monday has recently launched some variables like Monday CRM, Monday Dev, and Monday Service (Beta) with in-depth features for different use cases, yet each has a separate pricing. Monday Work management is still their most popular product. 

First thing first, pricing!

Many of the bad reviews I see about Monday are about their hardly-affordable pricing. If this is also what you are struggling with, why don’t we deal with that first? 

Good news for you, Rework is wayyy cheaper than Monday. We also offer flat pricing: 6$/user/month for everything. No limitation on file storage. No “upgrade to unlock new features”. No counting on every automation or integration you make. Our view on this: If a product is made perfect the way it is, why hide features from users and make them pay to experience it as a whole?

(Little) bad news: We do not offer a monthly payment option, and you must pay for at least 10 users. Our product is about management and collaboration across departments, so we don’t think it makes sense if there are too few people on board. The yearly bill equals commitment from both sides so that Rework can bring real changes to your operation system. 

What about the 14-day free trial and free plan? We don’t have an exact policy like that, but we do offer trial accounts. However, instead of handing you the accounts and letting you figure out the system on your own, we only do that after having scheduled a demo meeting, walking you through the system, and explaining the best way for you to use Rework. 

Does that sound convincing enough for you to continue reading? 

The fundamentals

Before giving you a yes-no feature list, we think it’d be better to compare how the two products are differently designed.

When you first start with Monday, you see two things: rows and columns, which remind you of the classic Excel. Just like Excel sheets are built on cells, Monday structure comes down to “items”, but it goes one step further by adding custom automation builders, which means you can define almost any repeated action by connecting the items, even within a sheet (called “board” in Monday) or cross sheets.  

Screenshot from Monday.com website

For example, in the Purchase request board, there are two columns listing the estimated price of the requested item and the approval stage. You can create an automation that means: “When the value of Estimated Price is lower than XX$, set the Approval Stage to ‘Approved’.”

Imagine that modular, cell-based architecture is like lego blocks. That flexibility simply enables you to build almost everything. 

Some may refer to Monday.com as a project management system only, but as we have analyzed so far, Monday is everything - all at once. 

(Problem is this automation feature is not available for Basic Plan - so like in Basic Plan you get charged for Excel with colors and templates) 

On the other hand, Rework is built on a “platform” architecture. It consists of multiple apps, each developed thoroughly like an independent SaaS, like Flows for process management, Request for approval management, and Projects for … you know what it is. That is to name only a few. 

The interface of Rework Flows - process management app, a key app in our ecosystem

By developing an entire application for a particular function, we are able to deep dive into the operation problem and solve it intensively. Functions are built to match sophisticated management needs. Instead of lego blocks, we give you the entire house with prebuilt rooms, so all you need to do is add furniture and decorations to your liking.

One thing missing from this analogy is that there is also actually no limit to the size of the house - that means we can add as many rooms as we want. Our ambition is to build an ecosystem where you can find almost every functionality for your operation and management. 

This way of product design also gives us another advantage. If you look at bad reviews about Monday on G2, you’ll usually bump into something like these:

Cell-based architecture, despite its high flexibility, lacks user-friendliness. It just doesn’t look like the way you usually work and doesn’t feel intuitive at all. Their template store may help a little, but the mere effort to understand the template to be able to customize it is enough challenging. 

If your team hasn’t used any kind of software before and they must switch from the manual, paper way to the blank, uninspiring cells and columns, it can be utterly distressing. 

Meanwhile, every app within Rework is built based on the everyday use case. The request form in Rework looks like a paper form, and the process is visualized like a pipeline. It takes a glance to grasp the concept of each application.  

The interface of Rework Request - with information stated clearly in a structured way

We think that Monday is trying to solve this problem by customizing their core product for specific use cases like Monday CRM or Monday Dev. But at the center of it, it is still the cell-based architecture, and it is more about us logging in the data within the cells, rather than really operating. 

To sum up, this is our recommendation for each type of user: 

Monday.com - Suitable for small or flat teams in need of peer-to-peer collaboration. Technical expertise or at least familiarity with technical stuff is recommended.  

Rework.com - Suitable for middle or (small but) middle-to-be teams in search of better top-down management. No technical experience required. 

The features

Let’s not beat around the bush - I’m going to give you a list of key features compared between the two, and I will only focus on some popular, advanced ones that most customers often ask for.

Other aspects you may care about

The customer support service

I must say 1-0 for Rework at this point. We say no to support chatbot and delayed email tickets, and instead have a dedicated support manager for your implementation project. 

Based on our experience with thousands of customers, we even developed a framework named SPET to ensure the implementation success rate - we know that the tech transition process can be overwhelming and challenging for any business. 

Our customer support and product teams are highly aligned. That means you don’t have to wait for years for answers to your product questions, like when will a certain feature be available, or whether our product team are even considering it… 

When we say we appreciate our customer feedback, it’s not just lip service - we spend time listening to customers and we do it seriously. We set up review meetings with customers at certain milestones during the implementation project to discuss how you can really operate better with Rework.  

Just a little feedback on the system speed and our customer support and product team worked on it immediately. Thankfully our customer felt satisfied   

The brand

Unquestionably, Monday scores this time. Founded in 2012, Monday surely has a long, established history with SaaS applications. Contrary to the renowned, market-leading Monday.com which is trusted globally with more than 200,000 customers, Rework is just an underdog. 

Currently, we have served clients in 6+ countries in APAC (Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Australia), and established offices in Philippines and Malaysia. Further expansion is sure to come shortly. 

The team

In case you’re curious about the people behind the product, this is a picture of our team (sadly I didn’t get myself in this pic 😔 ) 

My favorite people - the young, hungry and foolish team at Rework. The man sitting in the light blue jeans at the center is our founder and CEO, also the chief product architect, who still codes every day.   

Long story short

I have said everything I have to say and although I said it’s a little biased, I did try to stay as fair as possible. All that's left is for you to decide. Which one do you prefer: the David or the Goliath? It comes down to your needs, your budget, your business culture, and tech literacy. If you can’t even be so sure about that, why don’t you head to a meeting with us and we'll help you find out?